Week 1 in the Books...Not Really!

When I saw the topic for this month's #blogamonth, I was very excited to share what I do, but also to see what other teachers do to get the school year started. My first 5 days are probably a little different than some teachers' because I teach at Aurora High School where we have 85 minutes blocks. We meet with the same students everyday, but I only get my students for a semester. With that being said, my class moves twice as fast as a typical class so I can get everything done by Christmas. I am going to combine the two #blogamonth questions:
Teachers, How will you make the first week of school meaningful to your students? 
What have you done / what will you do with the #1st5days?
My plan is to explain what I did during my first week of school PLUS why I did it/why it is meaningful to my students.

My First Week of School
Monday
My goal for the first day of class is to let my students know what I expect out of them. I don't spend a lot of time with introductions because, like any school, I have students switching classes and sections like crazy on the first day. I strive to answer the question that many of my students wrestle with:
"I don't like science. I don't care about science. Why am I stuck in Biology class."
I think Aurora's Mission Statement answers this very well. Here is our new and (maybe) improved mission statement:
Aurora Public Schools provide learning opportunities for all learners in academics, social interactions, and extra-curricular activities.
I have used this to show students that school is more than just academics. Likewise, Biology is about much more that just science. In my high school class (working with sophomores) I want to develop skills they will use later in life regardless of their interests.My Biology mission statement is all about developing useful skills like communication, teamwork, focus, and networking. Thing that will help my students even if they don't use biology again (which is my nightmare...)
I also had the opportunity to attend ALP last year which emphasizes engagement and getting every student doing everything everyday. I made a poster that I am inexplicably proud of. It is a quick and easy way for me to remind everyone that paying attention is something visible that I should be able to see everyday.

Biology Welcome PowerPoint

Tuesday
On Tuesday we started getting into science curriculum. I try to get my students to understand that science is something you DO, not something you memorize! The exciting thing we did this year is we started BLOGGING!! Let me do some explaining...
I have never given my students textbooks because I think textbooks are boring. (That is where the "not really" part of the titel come in.)Now, if I,someone who loves science, think textbooks are boring, I know my students will be bored out of their minds reading chapter sections and answering questions about it. Also, I don't think it is a very good way to get students to care or remember what they learn. I know I have never used a textbook to answer a question since I left college. Instead, I use the internet machine and I think most of my students do too. I know its important for my students to read in my class, so I find articles online about topics we discuss in class. These articles are always more exciting than any textbook, plus they are thinking about science in a way that will be useful after high school.
I do a strategy that is a modified version of close reading where I read the article out loud and they read the next word whenever I stop. After we are done, as a class we define any confusing terms and answer some opinionated questions. I try to find articles that would allow my students to take one side or the other. Here is our article about science and society.
Ebola Article
I asked my students to explain either why the sick doctors should have been left in Africa, or why they should have been brought back to the US. Here are their opinions:
Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
I'm excited to see if my students stay excited about blogging or if they tire of it as the year goes on.
Characteristics of Science PowerPoint
Wednesday
We finished our blogs and posted them on Wednesday. I also had my students do a presentation on a famous scientist to show how society and science are related. I wrote a blogpost about this last year so you can read all about it if you are interested. Scientist Presentations

Last year I also discovered the power of bellringers, so I used to start every class period with a multiple choice questions (similar to a standardized test questions) and had them hold up a 1 for A, a 2 for B, a 3 for C and a 4 for D. I found that I had 4 students answer the question and 18 students copy the answer without thinking. This year I decided to replace it with Kahoot! and it has worked out great so far. I keep a running total of their scores throughout the week and at the end of the week the                                                                                       students with the most points gets a prize!

Thursday
On Thursday, I devoted the entire class period to listening to student presentations. I wanted my students to pay attention to what their classmates were saying so I decided to let them tweet during the presentation. I was nervous that the students would being checking their twitter accounts instead of tweeting, but I thought they did a great job! I should have expected it, but my students seemed more focused on making their classmates laugh than they were about tweeting accurate information... All in all, I was very impressed and thought they did a great job. Here is a record of all the tweets dropped on Thursday.Storify of Student Tweets  I'm excited to try it again with other presentations!

This is one of my favorite tweets:"What people said to Rosalind when she was a girl scientist. #ahsbio"

Friday
Friday was a little less exciting in that we covered information about the Scientific Method. It was a little bit more like your typical science class, where I just shared information that I thought was important for students to know. I did try to spice things up a bit by getting students up and moving with some engagement strategies.
Scientific Method PowerPoint

I would love to see what other high school teacher do during their first week. I'm sure it seems like I crammed a lot into the first week, but remember I probably have twice as much time as most teachers. If you want, I would be thrilled to read in comments you might have!

Par for the Course

This summer I made the mistake of picking up golf as a hobby. I went in deep, my wife bought me new clubs, I got a range pass, I went golfing as much as possible, and I recorded 24 hours of PGA coverage. (Go Rickie!)

 When I first started golfing my goal was to keep each hole in the single digits. Then as I practiced more my goal was for bogeys. Then I occasionally got pars. For most of the summer I thought that birdies were not actually possible, and anyone claiming to have gotten one must be a liar (I like squares better than circles anyway.) My greatest athletic achievement to date is shooting in the double digits for 18 holes (96 baby!) This golfing experience made me think of 2 blog posts I read this summer.

Blog post #1
This blog is written by our technology coach Mr. Badura on his blog entitled Comfortably 2.0. In early July he got his PLN buzzing with the catchy blogpost "Is the "F" Word Holding You Back in Your Classroom.

Of course you should read his entire post but if you are too lazy (or you have concerns about reading a blog with that title) here is a quick summary:
Mr. Badura talks about his experience when the district he taught at went 1:1 Macbook Pro. Here is a really quick excerpt:

Fear immediately set in...

I was afraid that the device was going to be more interesting than me...
I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to engage my students...
I was afraid that I was going to have to change a lot of the things I was doing in my classroom...
I feared that the technology rich lesson I had planned would fail...

He strongly encouraged teachers to overcome their fears of trying new things in their classrooms.
I faced similar fears when I first started golfing. I was to scared to go the the course because:

Fear immediately set in...
I was afraid that I would miss the ball on my tee shot...
I was afraid that I would 4 putt every hole...
I was afraid I would hit my drive into the wrong fairway...
I feared that I would have 8 groups waiting for me to finish my hole...

When I actually did go golfing, I realized that most players aren't that much better than I am and most players wait to make fun of you until you can't hear it... All of my fears were unfounded and I could have had a lot more fun hunting for those elusive birdies.

Blog post #2

This blog is entitled Living in the Cracks and is written by Amanda Kruysman a teacher near Charlotte, NC. Her blogpost also had an intriguing title I Quit that made me anxious to see what had her so fired up. Once again reading her post is well worth your time (it is a super engaging blog) but I will provide a brief synopsis:

Amanda is a super motivated educator who works hard to become the best educator. She is often met by resistance by people who are content to do the bare minimum and just get by, because they are scared she will raise expectations for them. I will give you an excerpt and a quote because they are both awesome!

...As teachers, we constantly fight the battle (whether we know/admit/like it or not) against the age old saying "Those who can't do, teach." I am as smart as my friends who are attorneys, medical students, veterinarians, and engineers. I could do anything I want to do, and what I want to do is teach. But there is this stigma that teachers JUST teach. ...
 When was the last time you told your students that the bare minimum was acceptable? 

I have one personal story about this. When I was at college at Wayne State College, I had a professor who told me that I was too smart to be a teacher and that students switch from health care to education only if they are struggling to keep up. ( I also had amazing professors that I loved like Dr. Christensen, Dr. Ettel, and Dr. Dilliard) Why aren't good science students encouraged to get into education?

When I started playing golf, it was with the intention of getting better. I knew my goal would not always be to finish a hole in 9 strokes or less. Shouldn't that be the same with our teaching? How can our goals remain the same from year to year?

Reflection
According to Mr. Badura's blogpost, the reason for this push-back that Amanda experienced is fear that they will have to change what they are doing. I have a slightly different hypothesis based on personal experience. It is also a 4 letter word, but instead of fear I think the word is LAZY. When I am exposed to a new idea for my classroom, I don't think about how scary it is, I think about how much work it would be to implement. Last year, my district volunteered me to be a part of ALP (we've all been volunteered before, right?). I had a horrible attitude, not because I was scared to implement these techniques, but because I was convinced it would be a lot of work and a waste of time. Thankfully it didn't take long for me to have an attitude adjustment, but it is kind of surprising how skeptical I was of something just from sheer laziness.

Amanda's blogpost reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my friend Darin Garfield. We both coach wrestling and we were discussing the use of a new term that drives both of us nuts. The term is "try hard" and I hear it used all the time in my Biology classroom. It is used to make a student (or athlete) who meets expectations feel like their efforts were a stupid waste of time. It is a new twist on the classic "teacher's pet." This is what students' do to make their lack of effort acceptable, but teachers do the exact same thing.

This year put in the extra effort to be the best teacher you can be. Do not let laziness slow you down. If it helps your students learn, put in the effort to make it happen. Do new things this year. Do all the things you have been considering, but never worked on. Do not be this guy...

Instead be this guy!!